


Hourglass

by pi314159geek



Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: Baelfire survives, F/M, Fix-It, non-time travel fix-it, yet another s3 fix-it i guess
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-12-25
Updated: 2019-12-30
Packaged: 2021-02-26 02:42:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 3
Words: 4,003
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21946036
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pi314159geek/pseuds/pi314159geek
Summary: Once Upon a Time S3B, but it's blended with plot points from the original Wizard of Oz movie & the original Beauty and the Beast fairytale. Baelfire survives.
Relationships: Baelfire | Neal Cassidy & Belle, Baelfire | Neal Cassidy & Rumplestiltskin | Mr. Gold, Baelfire | Neal Cassidy/Emma Swan, Belle & Rumplestiltskin | Mr. Gold, Belle/Rumplestiltskin | Mr. Gold
Comments: 6
Kudos: 23





	1. The Emerald Key

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Backstory: In this version, Belle went to Zelena's farmhouse by herself to try and rescue Rumplestiltskin. Naturally, Zelena captured her.

"That's how long you've got to live." Zelena turned over an elaborate gilded hourglass on the center table. Rumplestiltskin paced just outside the door, stricken. "If you're lucky, you'll accidentally trip one of the curses on the objects in this room. That would give you a quicker death than what I've got planned.

Belle wiped away a trickle of blood from her chin and eyed the hourglass closely. "Is that actually linked to my life force, or are you just being dramatic?"

Zelena glared at her. "Come on, Rumple. Let's leave your girlfriend to her imminent doom." She turned to leave, Rumple following behind her.

The door slammed shut, and Belle turned to assess her surroundings. Magic hung heavy in the air. It reminded her strikingly of Rumplestiltskin's workroom in the Dark Castle, with all the magical objects and potion ingredients lining the walls. The one thing missing was Rumple's extensive collection of books on magic theory, potion-making, charms, and everything else that could be possibly be useful to a wizard trying to reach a Land Without Magic.

Belle was surprised to find that she recognized some of the objects. She figured Zelena had stolen them from Rumplestiltskin and Regina back in the Enchanted Forest. A small silver bar sat on a lower shelf, inscribed with an ancient rune (probably Fae, Belle thought). _Aegis_ , it read. Shield.

She instinctively pocketed it. Zelena's crystal ball sat on a far table, which reassured Belle that she wasn't being spied on. Watching her every step -- you could never be sure what unpleasant cursed traps might be in a magic-user's workroom -- she walked over to inspect the crystal ball. Shapeless green smoke swirled inside it. She tapped the crystal twice. "I'd like to see my father," she told it.

The green smoke reshaped itself into an image. Emma, Henry, the Charmings, Regina, Killian (so, the entire Charming family council), and -- yes, her father -- were all gathered around a table in what appeared to be the Charmings' dining room. Everyone save Regina and Moe French had weapons on them.

"…the last time you saw her?" Moe French was demanding.

"Well, she was explaining the four talismans that Zelena would need for her time-travel spell," Regina offered, "and possible alternatives to using my heart to represent the South."

"Which was where?"

"This house."

"She's not here. I'm sorry." Snow shook her head. "Have you checked the library, the pawnshop -- Gold's mansion, but that's unlikely -- maybe Granny's… those are really the only places she visits."

"Um…before she figured out Zelena's plan, she was looking for ways to free Gold from the dagger's control," Emma shifted awkwardly. "You don't suppose she…"

Regina and Emma exchanged matching looks of dawning horror.

"What, Belle, go after the Wicked Witch? I doubt it." Hook turned to Emma. "She's smarter than that."

A plume of green smoke appeared in the center of the room, and Zelena and Rumplestiltskin stepped out of it.

"I stand corrected," Hook muttered, drawing his sword.

Charming grabbed his sword from where it leaned against his chair, Snow strung an arrow to her bow, and Emma raised both hands before apparently remembering she was magic-less. For her part, Regina summoned fire into her right hand and pushed Henry behind her with her left.

Belle was suddenly aware of a bright flash of green light behind her. She dissipated the images in the crystal ball and whirled around, terrified that Zelena had returned. _No. I saw her at the Charmings', she can't have…_

But the light had come from the hourglass, apparently marking the halfway point. "How considerate of you," she told the timepiece.

She turned to skim the shelves of magical objects, and a glint of gold caught her eye.

It was a ring.

Just a simple golden band, but she recognized it immediately as Rumplestiltskin's work. Also, it sat atop the only book in the room. How Rumple had arranged this, she didn't know, but the message was clear enough.

Holding one hand near the golden band, she could detect the presence of defensive magic, but -- she was sure -- none that would harm her. Belle picked up the ring and slipped it onto her left hand. It immediately gave off a shower of red and gold sparks. The sparks fell onto the book's cover, and Belle instinctively moved her hand away to avoid damaging the book. But instead of burning, the book's cover glowed where the sparks fell. The volume fell open to reveal a key that looked like it had been made from a single, huge emerald.

Zelena was so over-the-top sometimes. Belle picked up the key, still being careful to use only her ring hand, and touched it to the back of the shelf, which immediately shuddered and began rotating. She prayed Zelena was far away enough to not hear the shelf trembling. A final glance at the hourglass reassured her that the witch wouldn't be returning anytime soon.

The bookshelf opened into a huge, sunny room. What looked like a greenhouse -- and it seemed Zelena interpreted the term "greenhouse" a bit too literally -- was located to the left of the room. The rest of the room was filled with more shelves of magical objects -- and yes, more shelves of books. Belle smiled and walked right through.

The false wall closed gently behind her.

════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════

Unbeknownst to Belle, in the other room, the hourglass was glowing bright green as the last grains of sand fell through.

The door to the workroom flew open. "Now, let's see what magical traps she's managed to trip in her thirty minutes here," Zelena's voice was high-pitched enough to drift through the bookshelf wall, and Belle swore quietly from the other room.

She shoved four more books at random into the canvas sack that Zelena had been using to store a ridiculous number of spare crystal balls.

"Where is she?!" Zelena demanded. There was a loud crashing noise from the other room.

As the bookshelf-wall began to tremble, Belle twisted the golden ring on her finger three times counterclockwise and vanished.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hope you guys noticed, the opening scene is pretty much copied from the Wizard of Oz movie, because I could not stop thinking about how stupid it was for the Wicked Witch to lock Dorothy in a room literally chock-full of magical objects that could possibly help her escape.
> 
> As for Belle's ring having teleportation powers, you can interpret that in one of two ways. The first is that it's a convenient plot device. The second is that it's a reference to the original Beauty and the Beast story -- when the Beast frees Belle, he gives her a magic ring that can take her back to his palace if she wants. In some versions, Belle puts the ring on her nightstand before she goes to bed, and then wakes up in the Beast's castle. In other (most?) versions, Belle twists the ring on her finger three times and it automatically transports her.
> 
> So yeah, there you have my clever fairytale reference for the day.
> 
> Comments with constructive feedback always welcome. I've been told my writing is too dialogue-oriented, so this is sort of a practice exercise in "Not Making Characters Speak All the Exposition."


	2. The Golden Ring

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Emma, Regina, and Belle inventory the stuff from Belle's shopping spree in Zelena's workroom, back in Chapter One. Belle summons a familiar soul to Storybrooke.

"…can't let Zelena harm her," Regina was snarling. "You remember what happened the last time he thought she was dead!"

Snow and Emma exchanged looks. "I mean, you kind of had that coming," Emma pointed out.

"That's besides the point!"

"We just don't have the magic to rival hers. Even with Regina here," Prince Charming pointed out, half-glancing at his daughter. "Even if we knew how to use some of the less dangerous magical objects in Gold's hoard -- I mean, shop --"

Regina impatiently opened and closed her fist, creating black smoke, orange fire, and purple lightning in quick succession. "We don't have the time for this. We need to stop my sister's time-travel spell, and we need to stop it now!"

"We also need to get my daughter back!" Moe French pounded the table with one fist.

Hook sighed. "Look, love, isn't time travel against the laws of magic?"

"Which apparently can be broken without a problem, so I don't even know why they're called 'laws,'" Emma shrugged.

"Yes, and there are about a million reasons Zelena should have failed at every stage of her harebrained plan, but she's gotten this far, so I suppose we have to take her serious -- hey!" Regina jumped to her feet and aimed her hands at a spot across the room, where a cloud of teleportation smoke was forming.

"Why's it gold instead of red?" Henry asked.

The smoke cleared to reveal Belle.

"Belle! How did you --" Emma started.

Belle was too busy returning her father's crushing embrace to answer.

"Belle, are you alright? What did she do to you?!" Her father gestured to the bloody cut across her face.

"Nothing that can't be patched up with nonmagical medical procedures. I'm fine. I'm okay." She gently released herself from her father's embrace to address the room at large.

"Zelena is moving forward with her time-travel plan… Regina, you don't have to worry about your heart being stolen anymore, Zelena's making Rumple bottle our True Love, and she's going to use that in her spell instead… And I took some magical objects from her workroom that I think would be useful if we want to protect your baby brother, Emma."

There was dead silence in the room.

Abruptly, Regina laughed and clapped her hands together. "Well, what are we waiting for?"

════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════

An hour later, Belle, Regina, and Emma had barricaded themselves in Gold's pawnshop to inspect the magical items. "There's lionsbane. For the memory potion. Should be enough for…four or five doses, I would say?" Belle offered.

"For Henry," Regina said immediately.

"Yeah, that was my thought," Belle said. "The other three we can use for me, and for Snow and David."

Regina touched the green leaves almost reverently. "He'll remember me," she murmured, almost to herself. She looked up at Belle. "Th-thank you," she added, almost choking on the words.

Belle nodded simply.

"Is there anything else you want me to look at? Because if not, I'm going to go brew this potion now." Regina shoved all the lionsbane back into the canvas sack and slung it over her shoulder.

"Wait. There's this," Belle gestured to the cut on her face.

"Yes. Yes, of course," Regina reached out, an aura of purple light appearing around her hand.

"No, don't heal it right away," Belle said. "Zelena made this cut herself. With her magic. Can you pull her magic out of the wound?"

Realization dawned on Regina's face. "That…is brilliant."

"What?" Emma asked.

"If you have a sample of someone's magic, you can make protections based on it. Basically make yourself immune to further attacks of a similar nature," Belle said. "I was hoping I could weave the magic into some objects that would protect your parents against Zelena."

"It's hard to do correctly, though," Regina muttered. "And it will make the flesh wound itself worse."

"Just try it," Belle handed her a vial. "And focus."

Regina closed her eyes and inhaled deeply. Purple light blazed brightly around her.

"Okay," she said, a new gleam in her eyes. "Let's do this." The Evil Queen reached out, a hair's breadth away from touching Belle's face, and abruptly cried out.

"What is it?" Belle opened her eyes in time to see Regina being thrown backwards.

"What kind of magic…" Regina looked at her hand, then back up at Belle. "Did Zelena make that cut un-healable?"

"Doubt it, she doesn’t know much complex magic. Only enough to make her time-travel spell." Belle removed her ring and set it carefully on the counter. "Try it again, would you?"

Emma helped Regina to her feet. "Why would it be any different this time?" the Savior asked.

"This ring," Belle tapped it gently. "I think it has protections woven in against Regina's magic -- similar to the ones I want to make with Zelena's."

Cautiously, Regina reached towards Belle again, her hand glowing with violet magic.

At first, there was no feeling, just the usual sting. But very quickly, it began to feel as if something were working its way up from inside of the cut. It was like removing a splinter -- the thing that was so painful to remove was also what was causing the pain to begin with.

"Damnit!" Regina snarled suddenly. Belle opened her eyes to find a tiny sphere of volatile green energy floating before her face. Regina thrust out the vial and stuffed the sphere inside, filling it barely halfway.

"I messed it up," Regina looked at the vial distastefully. "I couldn't control it. Too much of her magic escaped."

"That's not so bad," Belle tapped the vial and watched the green substance -- not quite a liquid, not quite a gas -- swirl and shimmer. "That'll still protect, what, two people?"

"Barely." Regina shook her head. "One person, if you want to be safe."

"Then…give it to Snow. I'll work it into her wedding ring, and --"

"Belle…" Emma started. "I…I think you should take it. For yourself."

"What, me?" Belle shook her head. "My ring already has defensive magic in it. I'll be fine. Your mother needs it more. To protect her son."

"But if you succeed, then my mother won't even need it."

"And if I don't?"

"Then we'll know we tried our best." Regina nodded slowly. "I second Emma. Basic military principle: people who aren't on the front lines shouldn't have more protection than those who are. You'll be out there fighting. Snow won't. I'm not gonna be responsible for Zelena killing you."

"How encouraging."

"No, what I meant was -- well, Rumplestiltskin's clever. He'll find a way out of my sister's control sooner or later, and when he does, he'll kill her first and then hunt down everyone whom he thinks failed to protect you. I am not gonna be one of those people."

Belle opened her mouth and closed it again.

"Good, we agree on something. Then you also won't mind me and Emma working in the back room in case my sister decides to pay you an unexpected visit." Regina pivoted sharply (how she managed that in high heels, Belle would never know) and marched into the back room of the pawnshop, the Savior trailing closely behind her.

"Alright," Belle muttered. She picked up a small vial filled with deep black liquid. _Séance_ , the label read.

 _To do it, you need the murder weapon and the murderer_ , Regina had said. What, technically speaking, had killed Baelfire? He'd traded his life to resurrect his father, so most probably it was the key to the Dark One's vault. But there was another possibility, something else that might be linked closely enough to the magic of the Dark One.

She'd first noticed the glint of silver in her (promise? Engagement? She wasn't sure how to think of it) ring when she'd turned it to teleport herself out of Zelena's hidden library. But it hadn't immediately occurred to her what the silver was. She guessed that Rumple had begun work on the ring either before or immediately after Regina's first curse, before Zelena had gotten her hands on the dagger, which meant…that silver could be a part of his dagger.

It made sense, she thought, if he'd been trying to protect her with the ring. Having a part of the dagger on her at all times would protect her from most spells that could be cast with it. And since the gold itself was Rumplestiltskin's magical handiwork, that would defend her from his own magic as well.

Belle poured the contents of the vial into a shallow bowl and, careful not to touch the liquid itself, placed her ring in the center of the bowl. She closed her eyes, inhaled, and exhaled.

"Baelfire," she whispered.

Nothing happened.

A stroke of inspiration hit her.

"Baelfire. Baelfire," she repeated.

The liquid in the bowl began to stir without anything touching it, and Belle backed away from it as it slowly molded and remolded itself, rising into the air.

Baelfire couldn't return from the dead, not in the traditional sense, Belle realized. He would return from the Dark One's vault. Rumplestiltskin had been banished to the vault when he'd killed himself. When Baelfire opened the vault, that meant he had to go there in his father's place. Rumplestiltskin had only delayed that by binding his son's life force to his.

The deep black liquid became more transparent as it spread out, finally forming itself into a recognizable shape.

"Bae," Belle breathed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is a plot point that always bothered me in Season 5, when Emma met Bae in the Underworld. It's made pretty clear that the Dark One's vault houses all the souls of the Dark Ones, so you'd think the vault would definitely notice if the soul of a past dead Dark One were missing. It would have to replace the missing soul with the life that was traded for that Dark One.
> 
> I suppose an argument could be made that Baelfire traded his life, not his soul -- so he would bring back his father and go to a normal mortal afterlife, having not been a Dark One himself. The rules of the vault are never really laid down in stone, so maybe the OUAT universe *is* following its own magic rules.
> 
> Well, this is what we're going with.


	3. The Dark Ghost

"…and so that's how Zelena is three-quarters of the way to ruining the lives of everyone we know and care about," Belle finished.

"That's why she wanted us to bring back my dad." Bae -- Neal -- Belle wasn't sure how to think of him -- was silent for a long time. "Well, can we steal back the talismans?"

"We don't know where they are. I looked for them in her workroom, but no luck."

"Have you tried locator spells on them?"

"She put extra magical protections on her home base after I broke in. It wouldn't help."

"Stealing the dagger back?"

"It's practically glued to her palm."

"What _are_ these talismans, ag --"

"Neal?!" Emma had appeared in the doorway to the back room of the shop.

"Emma!" Neal swooped down and hovered before his former (current?) True Love.

"How did you -- what are --" Emma reached out to touch Neal's shoulder and hissed in pain as her hand went right through his shoulder.

"I think I'm made of dark magic right now. Try not to get too close."

"Where -- where were you for the past -- week?"

"The vault," Bae said, as if that explained everything.

"The…vault?"

"She doesn't have her memories," Belle explained. "Zelena cursed all of us to forget the past year."

Something shattered in the back room, followed by several more loud crashes.

"Hey, whoa!" Emma turned and ran into the back room, followed by Belle and Bae.

"Regina, calm _down_ , Rumple is perfectly capable of destroying his own shop," Belle snapped as the yew staff that Regina had been swinging around clattered to the floor. "Where did you get that, anyway?"

"Found it in that chest over there. We were using it to stir the potion," Emma shrugged. "Regina claimed yew wood was good for memory potions, or something."

Belle tilted her head. "I guess that makes sense, yew does have magical properties. But contrary to what Regina apparently thinks, it's not particularly well-suited for shattering collectibles."

The mayor was leaning on a table for support, snarling at the now-cracked far wall. "That pathetic green witch," Regina was spitting. "She thinks she can just waltz into my town and -- ugh!" Another unfortunate glass centerpiece met its doom.

 _Like teacher, like student_ , Belle thought.

Ghost-Bae raised an eyebrow at Emma. _This normal?_

Emma shrugged. _As close to normal as you can get in this town._

Belle grabbed Regina's wrist before she could throw any more fragile objects. "So did the potion work?"

"Obviously." Regina gestured at the various destroyed objects in her vicinity.

"You could also be going on a destructive rampage because it _didn't_ work," Emma pointed out.

Regina grunted irritably and sent a wave of purple magic at the wall. The dent disappeared, and the glass shards reassembled themselves into a glass unicorn, a to-scale model of a sloop, and two vials.

Emma grabbed both vials out of the air. "Okay, let's do this," she said, and dipped her vial into the cauldron.

Two Memory Potions and five minutes later, Emma and Bae had been dispatched to the Charmings' household ("Hook will want to know I'm back. Even if he and Emma -- well, you know," Bae mused), while Belle and Regina assigned themselves to magical defense duty.

"How long will he be able to stay in Storybrooke like that?" Regina asked, her eyes following Bae out the door. "Even ghosts -- true ghosts, not _whatever_ he is -- can't remain in this world permanently."

"I don't know," Belle said simply. She was torn between letting Rumplestiltskin see his son in this form. On the one hand, seeing him might throw Zelena off her game, and he would be useful against her flock of flying monkeys. On the other hand, there was no way a soul brought back by dark magic could sustain its existence in the human world long-term, and then for Rumple, it would be like losing his son all over again.

"Well, he needs a weapon if he's going to be useful," Regina pointed out.

"Yeah, I think like half the stuff from Rumple's castle got transported here after Snow's curse." Belle began rummaging through a chest.

"Are you aimlessly digging, or do you have something in mind for once?"

"Well, there should be a bow --"

"Neal doesn't know how to use a bow."

"Sure he does. Rumple said he shot Pan in Neverland."

Regina scoffed. "Dumb luck."

"Well, this bow never misses its target, so that won't be a problem."

"Oh," Regina raised an eyebrow. "I stand corrected."

"So I was thinking, if we use dried squid ink on the arrows --" Belle slammed the lid of another chest shut and began scouring another pile -- "it'll freeze the monkeys, so we don't have to kill them. Which we don't _want_ to kill them, because some of them are the transfigured dwarves."

"Not much of a loss, if you ask me," Regina muttered.

Belle ignored that. "And since the bow is magic, I think Bae should be able to hold it, because he's sort of made of magic at the moment. Here!" She held up her find. "Can you teleport these to him?"

Regina obligingly tapped the bow, and then the quiver, and both disappeared in clouds of purple smoke.

"You know something that might help with our Zelena problem?" Belle asked.

"If I did, we wouldn’t be here right now," Regina snapped, gesturing to their general surroundings.

"We need to fight smarter, not harder. There was this thing I saw in one of Zelena's spellbooks was, uh, this specific page. Uh…here." Belle tapped a page in one of the older-looking books she'd brought back -- a first edition on the construction of spells.

"Do you know," Regina mused, studying the page. "That might actually work. I'm impressed." She nodded. "I think I can do that. Right. That's all well and good… And as for our dagger problem, I saw that other object you brought back. That's a magic shield generator, and --"

"If we make a sort of magic vacuum --" Belle started.

"If we can replicate the town barriers that were in place under my curse, the ones that kept magic from existing here --"

"It'll block off the dagger's control," both finished in unison.

"But doesn't making those barriers require the heart of the thing you love most?" Belle was both relieved and ashamed at her own relief that that wasn't an option for her. After all, the thing she loved most was currently miles away, at the farmhouse at the edge of town. But for Regina, that would be Henry… Bae's son. Rumple would never forgive either of them if they killed his grandson, the only thing he had left of Bae.

"That was a dark curse, of course it required something like that. I was thinking we could remake it… instead of requiring the heart of the thing you love most, it would just require bottled True Love. And we'd need a source of light magic."

"Emma and Bae," Belle realized. "I'm sure I can get a sample of his hair from his old things, won't be too much of a problem. And the most reliable source of light magic we have is...Blue?" She looked up at Regina. "No way would she help us if she knew this was for Rumple."

"She'll do it. Just don't tell her what it's for."

"That's lying," Belle shifted uncomfortably.

"Damnit, save your heroic morals for a time when all our lives _aren't_ in danger!" Regina snarled.

Belle opened her mouth to fire back a retort, but the look on Regina's face was familiar. It was the look Rumple always got when someone he loved was in danger. He'd worn the same expression when Hook had shot her, when he'd killed Pan to save the town, and so many other times.

Belle relented. "Look, would you be less prickly if you knew your son was safe?" She picked up her phone, which was buzzing with a new text message. "Emma says they took him and the rest of the town's children to the cabin in the woods, and they need you to help put magical protections on it. I'll stay here and work on our dagger problem."

Regina's relief was palpable. "Alright, I'm on it. And I'll take these to the Charmings while I'm at it." She snatched up three vials and filled them all from the copper cauldron full of Memory Potion. "Time to make Henry remember me."

She vanished in a plume of purple smoke.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> More of a transition chapter than anything else, but it does explain some of the rules of magic I'm using in this universe. I also think that the whole point of Belle is that she's supposed to be book-smart, which is why I didn't get it when she did stupid things like face down Zelena, by herself, without being a magic user. I think the show let her be guided by her emotions to the point where it contradicted the character.
> 
> Anyway, that concludes my mini-rant, and on to the chapter where more exciting stuff happens.


End file.
